Many people like to season the food with thyme. But did you also know that for hundreds of years it has been used as medicinal plant as well? In ancient Greece, doctors such as Hippocrates employed thyme, too. And even today, thyme is an important medicinal plant used for symptomatic treatment of cough and bronchitis.
The main ingredients of thyme are essential oils, tanning agents, and flavonoids. Thyme extracts facilitate the clearing of the airways from mucus. Taken orally, the essential oils penetrate deeply into the bronchi, where they exert their positive action right where the disease is located. In infections of the mouth and throat thyme is used as a gargle or spray. When administered locally to the oral or pharyngeal mucosa, this medicinal plant has a disinfectant effect.
In cough, thyme extracts...
- loosen the viscous sticky mucus which clogs to the airways
- facilitate the coughing up of mucus
- have a disinfectant effect, and
- can help to relax the bronchi (bronchospasmolytic effect).